What do you mean you won’t take it?

By Austin Light
Like many people who purchased upgrades on Black Friday, I was stuck with an old product that I no longer needed. For me it was an almost five-year-old, 27-inch TV, one of Wal-Mart’s first high-def sets.
Though I was eventually unsatisfied with my old TV and its lack of features, I figured someone might want it; I mean it worked just fine. So I hefted it into the back of our car along with another older TV we had sitting around and headed to the pawn shop. I knew I wouldn’t get much for them — my brother sold his old computer monitor a few months ago for about $20 — but I’d take what I could get.
I pulled up to the pawn shop and a girl followed me out to assess my electronics. She took a look at both TVs and went back in the store. She came back out a moment later and told me they couldn’t take them; they were too big and too old. I was stunned. Four and a half years is too old?

One comment

Austin – Check out http://www.gesrecycles.com. I believe you will be pleasantly surprised to find a very progressive company in KY doing some amazing things with e-Waste (electronic waste).

It’s interesting to note that the magic number right now is right around 4 years old for the equipment to still have re-use value as a whole unit. After that an item is typically used for parts or recycled down to commodity level (plastic, metal, glass) and put back into the manufacturing stream.

GES is a ZERO landfill and Zero exporting recycler and yes I work there…quite proud of it too. If you’d like any more information about current trends in the e-Waste/asset recovery market please don’t hesitate to reach out to me through the contact us page on our website.

Thanks for believing in our cause! There are better options than just shredding it all and certainly better options than landfill or shipping it off to third world countries so they are forced to deal with our problems! Spread the word and let’s make a difference!